Although his rough-around-the-edges production and label affiliation suggest he is a folkie or New Weird American, his songwriting harkens back more to Tin Pan Alley than The Incredible String Band.

Sixteen tracks make for a long album, but the set works remarkably, with the Boys’ excursions into Tex-Mex pop and blues rarely even pushing the three-minute mark.

Although disintegration’s reach is far, infinite abandonment, even imagined, can’t be contained, but it can be uttered in a cry. All vibrantly tactile, this realization that it took self to cry for a self with which you’re now commingled in song.

The delivery is too matter-of-fact, too genuine to evoke pity or sadness. It is lethargic, yet not dreary -- it grabs you violently and lays you down so, so gently.

If the man’s curious oeuvre hasn’t already provided reason enough to pay attention, it’s doubtful Beware will convert anyone to the fold. But for those already attuned to Oldham’s songcraft, Beware is a rich and fulfilling work from a man who seems to have a paranormal grasp on human nature, with all the sensuality, God-fearing, tummy-rubbing and head-scratching that implies.

This is extremely addictive stuff, and after only a few listens, every track will attempt to/will succeed in worming its way into the willing listener's brain.

While there’s certainly something thrilling about the wild, back-and-forth rollercoaster ride of listening to a Danny Brown album, in the end the grandest triumphs of Danny’s work are the myriad revelations gained from how the seemingly contradictory elements of these dualities interact with one another.

Burned Mind contains some of the heaviest moments on record that I've ever heard.

Stuck On Nothing is a boozy, lusty hug of a record--an album so loving and large-hearted that its virtues essentially cancel out its flaws.

Despite some shortcomings, 4 is an unqualified success in the Hawksian sense: There are at least three great songs and no bad ones.

White Lung demand attention, engaging heart-to-heart conversations while simultaneously rioting.

It's a subtle album about an unexpected range life, full of slow talk and afterglows, the work of a confident and comforting craftsman. If this is what it means to grow old with Stephen Malkmus, faults and all, then bring it on.

Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is essentially an audio sketchbook, and its contents are necessarily rough, half-formed, and fragmentary. There is pleasure to be found here, particularly in Cobain’s left-field excursions into Burroughs-ian collage, but these pleasures will hold scant value to anyone not already convinced of the author’s peculiar genius.

Who Killed Harry Houdini?, the band’s second full-length release and first on major-label affiliate Mute Records, continues the group’s tradition of making happy, light-hearted pop music that’s simultaneously fizzy and sticky.

The result is an exuberant, almost joyful record brimming with sly cynicism and a newfound fondness for whoa-oh refrains and handclaps.

It hits just as furiously and sloppily as all the old Markers standards, no matter its label, run time, or production quality.

The resulting record plays like a soundtrack to a non-existent film, skeleton-framed and dramatic.

Simply put and strongly stated, King of Jeans goes beyond charting Pissed Jeans’ position as the Deans of Denim--it places them front and center as one of the best and most ferocious guitar bands out there.

As ever, the music of Rob Mazurek has numerous layers to confront, peel away, and embrace.

It's perhaps not as immediately satisfying as their early work and not nearly as charming as their intimate mid-career efforts, but, after several careful listens, the album feels as powerful and urgent as anything else in their discography.

Picking up where "Z" skidded off, Evil Urges is like a carnival, like life (after all, My Morning Jacket is in cahoots with The Band), like cigarrons, discarded cigarettes dredged from the Cimarron River, and cinnamon sticks in a pot of boiled apples on the stove.

It's clear there's a lot of, well, love on Infinite Love. And it's exciting to share in it.

Trying Hartz works as either an excellent starting point for Danielson or the perfectly paced next step for someone getting acquainted with the work of Daniel Smith and his musical family.

Dude Incredible is every bit as lean as its older siblings when it comes to reverb, overdubbings, FX, and samples.

NMW works as a ‘00s update of British invasion rock and orchestral and baroque pop, just as Jeff Lynne and the boys updated those sounds for the ‘70s.

In a lesser person's hands, this particular analog stew would have turned out to be nothing more than an album of farting robot sounds, but in Prekop's it is a well-conceived piece of musical experimentation. Drastically more daring than previous releases, Old Punch Card shows a radical side to Prekop that is relentlessly inventive.

Anti-Pop Consortium are still vital enough to keep the momentum they lost, in dreadfully untimely fashion, when they inexplicably broke up in 02.

The songs on This Is Another Life are so well written, so finely paced, and so relatable in the sentiments and predicaments they weave together, there’s little justification in chiding the album for not making it patently clear that art alone doesn’t redeem misfortune and anguish.